On March 27th we presented a new initiative to engage Tennessee-based companies of all sizes to create closed-loop systems in which one company's waste is another company's raw material. As we ended the presentation, we put out a call to action for Tennessee businesses and organizations interested in the project to get in touch - if this means you, fill out this form!

During this hour long session, representatives from General Motors, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conversation and the US Business Council for Sustainable Development (US BCSD) presented on:

• The concept and implementation of business-to-business material reuse and the plethora of business opportunities that can be uncovered.
• The US BCSD's Materials Marketplace, a new tool being used in Austin and other regions around the US to help companies easily post materials available or desired, identify reuse opportunities, and exchange underutilized materials.
• Our next steps and plan to engage with Tennessee automotive businesses and manufacturers to facilitate and launch a materials reuse network in the state.

Waste is just a resource out of place - lets work together to keep these high value resources out of the landfill and put them back into the hands of the Tennessee businesses that can use them best.

Today marked a milestone for Texas’ clean energy economy. Travis County voted to adopt the Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) program, making it the first county in Texas to do so. This means Austin and the surrounding area will soon reap the economic and environmental benefits from giving energy-intensive, thirsty Texas a reprieve with water efficiency and clean energy.

"The US Business Council for Sustainable Development ignited interest in PACE in 2011 after working on its implementation in Connecticut and California. Two attorneys with the Thompson and Knight law firm, Jim Morriss and Stephen Block, learned of this innovative energy financing concept at a Tucson meeting of the US BCSD and became infected with the idea of making it happen in Texas," said Andrew Mangan, executive director of the US BCSD.

"Together we created a new organization called Keeping PACE in Texas, hired an executive director, Charlene Heydinger, who prepared the way for legislative action in the 2013 session. And now, after years of hard work, Travis County has stepped up as the first government in Texas to launch a PACE energy efficiency in buildings program," Mangan said.

What is PACE?

PACE, enacted during the 2013 Texas Legislature with support from both sides of the aisle, has the potential to unlock a considerable amount of private funding for clean energy projects in the state. Specifically, it is an innovative financing program – completely free of government mandates and public funding – that enables commercial, industrial, multi-family, and agricultural property owners to obtain low-cost, long-term loans for water conservation, energy-efficiency, and renewable energy projects. Participants will then repay these loans for clean energy projects through their property tax bill.

A PACE loan simultaneously offers building owners cheaper financing options and lenders secure repayment terms. In exchange for funds provided by a private lender to pay for the project, the property owner voluntarily requests that the local government place an assessment secured with a senior lien on the property until the assessment is paid in full. The assessment is owed to the local government, which forwards the payments to the private lender.

State Program, County Project, Local Support

Travis County Commissioners Gerald Daugherty (R) and Brigid Shea (D) united to cosponsor the resolution with tremendous support from a large local coalition of PACE advocates in Travis County, as well as by County Tax Assessor Collector Bruce Elfant.

This means that within the next several weeks, private funding for water and energy efficiency upgrades as well as renewable energy projects in Travis County will be unleashed for local businesses.

Benefits to Businesses

PACE has great potential to directly affect the bottom lines of small and medium sized businesses. To be eligible for PACE financing, a project must show that the savings in utility costs will offset the cost of installing the project. In most instances, this will result in an immediate positive cash flow. This mechanism can be used to equip buildings with the latest in efficiency technology, including lighting, HVAC, and water conservation tools. In addition, PACE can be used for renewable energy additions, such as roof-top solar panels.

Nationally, almost 75 percent of PACE projects were less than $250,000 in size, demonstrating PACE’s popularity as a tool for small and medium-size businesses. Further, these project installations lead to increased property value and lower utility bills, making PACE projects attractive for both property owners and tenants alike.

The Future of PACE in Texas

Texas now has its first PACE program. But it shouldn’t stop here in Travis County. The state of Texas accounts for about 12 percent of the entire country’s energy use, and Texas’ unique PACE framework makes implementation across the state easy and predictable. In the next few months, we’ll be looking to help other counties follow with PACE programs of their own. If you’d like to bring PACE to your county in Texas, please contact Keeping PACE in Texas.

Head over to the events page to check out three upcoming events:

• March 27th - a live, online Google Hangout introducing the concept of business-to-business materials reuse for businesses in and around Tennessee.
• April 8th - an in-person working meeting for the ROC Detroit project which will be held at the GM Renaissance Center in Detroit, Michigan.
• July 16-17th - our next US BCSD - WBCSD - Yale Center for Business and Environment conference to be held at Yale University.

Houston, Texas, 4 March 2015 – An action plan designed to significantly improve the market competitiveness of Houston’s buildings and attract investments in energy efficiency was released today by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and the United States Business Council for Sustainable Development (US BCSD) at a ceremony at Rice University.

The action plan is based on the recommendations of the Houston Energy Efficiency in Buildings Laboratory (EEB Lab) held jointly by the WBCSD and the US BCSD in October 2014.

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Research shows that energy savings of 30% from Houston’s commercial sector alone would contribute over half a billion dollars to the Houston economy. This is equivalent to the investment required to build 10 new mid-size power plants. Savings of this magnitude would add to the employment created by the increased activity in energy efficiency retrofits and other energy services, and could translate into nearly 20,000 new jobs over a five-year period.

The action plan is grouped into four themes and actions are targeted primarily at Class B and C building owners, who have less history of making EEB investments. All EEB Lab participants agreed that this market is a priority action area. Implementation will be driven by a team of local public and private sector leaders across the following areas:

1. Raising awareness of the multiple benefits of Energy Efficiency in Buildings (EEB) – Targeted communications to emphasize the benefits of EEB, with the aim of motivating regional real estate professionals to take action on energy efficiency.
2. Financing EEB Solutions – The coordination, promotion and development of energy efficiency financing options and tools, in tandem with improving access to these solutions. All financial tools, such as utility on-bill financing, energy service agreements, and Keeping PACE in Texas, will be presented under an energy efficiency financing umbrella.
3. Building Capacity to deliver EEB Solutions – Identification of industry best practice and allocation of EEB training resources to scale up energy efficiency projects in Houston. Training will address the nature of energy efficiency investments, achieving maximum value and realizing energy savings that can be sustained.
4. Increasing Houston’s real estate market competitiveness with EEB Solutions - Public policy development to improve the long-term competitiveness of Houston’s buildings. The implementation team will serve as a sounding board for proposed policy and regulatory action.

While much remains to be done, proactive leadership from the City of Houston has helped to significantly improve the energy efficiency of its buildings. Overall, Houston is now ranked fifth in the US for the number of LEED certified projects within the city, and has a total of 369 LEED certified projects. Additionally, Houston mayor Annise Parker made a public commitment at the UN Summit on Climate Change on 23 September 2014, that Houston would cut CO2 emissions by 80% from 2005 levels by 2050.

To oversee the implementation process of the action plan, a new platform entitled Energy Efficiency in Buildings – Houston, has been established. Led by the WBCSD and the US BCSD, and managed locally by the Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC), a coalition of public and private sector volunteers will build and sustain the momentum. Key leaders from the Gulf Coast Green Building Council, the City Energy Project and Keeping Pace in Texas will convene and coordinate actions between stakeholder groups while providing governance to ensure effective implementation.

The platform will enable members to complement each other’s activities and exchange experiences; collaborate with the public sector on the development of a long-term energy-efficient buildings strategy; and engage in policy consultation through the channels offered by the partner organizations.

Building sector stakeholders are encouraged to study the report and join the platform to coordinate actions towards market transformation.

WBCSD member companies Schneider Electric and United Technologies (co-project leaders), AGC, Lafarge and Siemens have supported the Houston Lab and will help drive implementation.

Roland Hunziker, Director Sustainable Buildings at WBCSD, says “EEB Laboratories foster a shared understanding of the specific barriers a building market is facing. Most importantly, they allow the creation of partnerships that are necessary to drive action to overcome these market barriers.”

More information can be found on the WBCSD and US BCSD websites.

About the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), a CEO-led organization of some 200 forward-thinking global companies, is committed to galvanizing the global business community to create a sustainable future for business, society and the environment. Together with its members, the council applies its respected thought leadership and effective advocacy to generate constructive solutions and take shared action. Leveraging its strong relationships with stakeholders as the leading advocate for business, the council helps drive debate and policy change in favor of sustainable development solutions.

The WBCSD provides a forum for its member companies - who represent all business sectors, all continents and a combined revenue of more than $8.5 trillion, 19 million employees - to share best practices on sustainable development issues and to develop innovative tools that change the status quo. The council also benefits from a network of 70 national and regional business councils and partner organizations, a majority of which are based in developing countries. Web: http://wbcsd.org  |  Twitter: @wbcsd

About the United States Business Council for Sustainable Development (US BCSD) The US BCSD is an action oriented and member-led nonprofit business association that harnesses the power of collaborative projects, platforms and partnerships to develop, deploy and scale solutions to ecosystems, energy, materials and water challenges. Web: http://usbcsd.org  |  Twitter: @usbcsd

      

BATON ROUGE, La. and AUSTIN, Texas (February 9, 2015) — Nearly a decade after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and five years after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill ravaged the Louisiana coastline, two groups that have separately tackled a number of issues involving the protective role played by the region’s eroding wetlands and the importance of Louisiana’s water resources are now joining forces.

The Water Institute of the Gulf and the United States Business Council for Sustainable Development (US BCSD) today announced an agreement that will allow the organizations to collaborate on applied research aimed at finding solutions to water challenges in the region and around the world.

The agreement creates an alliance between two groups that have been working to help industries and their surrounding communities find sustainable solutions to water resource issues. It joins The Water Institute, a Louisiana-based non-profit research institute, and the US BCSD, a Texas-based non-profit that uses collaborative projects and partnerships to develop, deploy and scale solutions to ecosystems, energy, materials and water challenges.

The US BCSD is composed of 55 U.S. companies sharing a commitment to pursuing sustainable development. It is a member of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, a global network of more than 200 international companies that serves as the umbrella organization for 65 similar national business councils worldwide.

"We're extremely excited to add the US BCSD to our strong network of partners,” said Chip Groat, Ph.D., president and CEO of The Water Institute. “The council’s relationships with the private sector will add valuable capacity to efforts to meet challenges and develop solutions across the Gulf Coast, the nation and beyond.”

“This collaboration will provide valuable technical expertise to project participants as they tackle water challenges that are key to their businesses and communities,” said Andrew Mangan, Executive Director of the US BCSD. “Together, our two organizations will seek ways to convert water challenges to economic opportunities in ways that benefit people, ecosystems and businesses.”

The US BCSD’s Louisiana Water Synergy Project will serve as the platform for the organizations’ initial cooperative venture. The project, which began in May 2012, provides a forum for business leaders with infrastructure investments in southern Louisiana to collaborate on efforts to help ensure sustainable water supplies while protecting wetlands and improving water quality in the region.

The project involves 21 companies representing a wide range of industrial sectors, including manufacturing, beverages, oil and gas, chemicals and utilities. Participants also include representatives from the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, and Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry.

A key objective for the pilot is to develop a replicable work process that can be applied in other watersheds and regions.

About The Water Institute of the Gulf The Water Institute of the Gulf is a not-for-profit, independent research institute dedicated to advancing the understanding of coastal, deltaic, river and water resource systems, both within the Gulf Coast and around the world. This mission supports the practical application of innovative science and engineering, providing solutions that benefit society. For more information, visit www.thewaterinstitute.org.

About the United States Business Council for Sustainable Development (US BCSD) The US BCSD is an action oriented and member-led nonprofit business association that harnesses the power of collaborative projects, platforms and partnerships to develop, deploy and scale solutions to ecosystems, energy, materials and water challenges. For more information, visit www.usbcsd.org.

Industries in Louisiana have been working with environmental groups, state agencies and university scientists to brainstorm potential solutions addressing water quality issues. Ranging from wetlands restoration to reducing the size of the annual low-oxygen “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, the collaboration through the Louisiana Water Synergy Project is meant to deal with potential risks to water in the Baton Rouge-New Orleans industrial corridor and beyond.

The project got started several years ago through the efforts of the nonprofit United States Business Council for Sustainable Development, said Susan Fernandes, manager of the project with the council. “Water is critical to business, but it’s also critical to agriculture, the cities where we live and the environment,” Fernandes said Wednesday. Fernandes’ comments came on the first day of the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association annual meeting in New Orleans. Read more.

Why GM, W Hotels and a craft brewer are swapping trash in Austin

DETROIT, MICHIGAN - General Motors, ROC Detroit project champion and US BCSD member, is repurposing Chevy Volt battery covers into Scaly-sided merganser nest boxes. The Scaly-sided merganser is endangered, and General Motors is working through the US BCSD and Wetlands International to help these beautiful waterfowl. John Bradburn, chairman of the US BCSD Executive Committee, designed and built the boxes after discussing the requirements with Wetlands International. John based his design on similar nest boxes built for the North American Wood Duck, however the size is scaled up to nearly three feet tall since the Scaly-sided merganser is larger. 10 boxes have been sent to China so far.

Let’s make materials management a recognized and rewarded carbon reduction strategy of the proposed UN Climate Change Agreement

By Andrew Mangan, US BCSD and Marian Chertow, Yale University

Modern society has an intense thirst for physical resources to meet daily human needs, wants, and desires, which, in turn, is supported by the businesses and industries that collectively service these requests. The processes that provide physical resources generate significant quantities of waste at every step of the way, exposing us all to vast environmental, energy, and resource availability challenges. Once again much of the world is focusing on global climate with the upcoming meetings in 2015 in Paris following another year of bewildering weather and readily apparent land change. Years of research have shown that waste reduction is repeatedly associated with lowering greenhouse gases (GHGs) that exacerbate climate change. It is time we recognize the good actors and reward them by making waste reduction a recognized carbon reduction strategy in the upcoming UN climate negotiations.

While waste and materials management have not been on the front line of climate solutions, current emphasis on lifecycle approaches reveals that it is time to reconsider their role. If we break the climate problem down into different economic sectors, we see that energy and transport are nearly 2/3 of where GHG emissions originate – based primarily on fossil fuels burned to generate electricity and also to power vehicles (Figure 1). Yet, a recent US EPA report suggests that we slice the pie chart a bit differently to increase understanding of what EPA now calls “materials management” described as “serving human needs by using and reusing resources most productively and sustainably throughout their lifecycles.” (source) From a materials management perspective, the second chart below, based on a systems rather than sectoral approach, becomes quite relevant (Figure 2). As seen here, materials management systems for providing food and other goods accounts for 42% of GHG emissions. This figure embraces a lifecycle perspective that considers the extraction of natural resources, production, transport and disposal of food and other goods.

Source: US EPA 2009. Opportunities to Reduce Greenhouse Gas. Emissions through Materials and Land Management Practices

Great work is going on in industry toward materials management that not only creates new revenues and saves on landfill, but also reduces climate impacts when virgin materials can be avoided and efficiency can be increased. Some interesting ways that industries we work with are having success fall into three categories: internal reuse and recycling within a firm or facility, online material trading with other firms, and trading across unrelated facilities in the same geographical area. These are discussed below:

1. Trading across unrelated facilities in the same geographical area – While geographic concentrations of industry are often heavy generators of GHGs associated with global climate change, impacts can be modulated through collaborative approaches. Emerging from industrial ecology is the notion of “industrial symbiosis” - where a cluster of geographically proximate firms exchange material by-products, energy, and water in a mutually beneficial manner such that waste from one industrial process becomes the feedstock for another. Through such systems, transportation costs and emissions are minimized and materials and energy already embedded in products is conserved, enabling GHG emissions to be greatly reduced at the industrial scale. For example, in Austin, Texas, the Austin Materials Marketplace is bringing together businesses of all sizes and entrepreneurs in the City of Austin and Travis County to create closed-loop systems in which one company’s waste is another company’s raw material. Other networked clusters have been found across the world from the mineral processing region in Kwinana, Australia to China’s enormous Tianjin Economic –Technological Development Area to Kalundborg Denmark, and the industrial cluster of Ulsan, Korea. And the Reuse Opportunity Collaboratory began in Detroit, Michigan, USA to bring together urban entrepreneurs and community economic development organizations to find ways of reusing materials such as deconstructing old buildings rather than demolishing them to repurpose resources for alley repaving and to construct new sidewalks.

2. 

   Internal reuse and recycling within a firm or facility – In addition to traditional materials management that has gone on as long as there has been industry, the US Business Council for Sustainable Development is seeing an upsurge in members paying careful attention to by-product reuse. General Motors and Nike, for example, both operate with the mindset that waste is merely a resource out of place, and both have set billion dollar goals based on material reuse. They emphasize improving material yields, reusing remaining scrap in a closed loop back into their own products and maximizing recycling of the rest.

3. Online materials trading – old fashioned “waste exchanges” once served the purpose of letting one firm know that another had a discarded resource to offer for sale. Today most of this happens on line and systems are getting more sophisticated. An outpouring of interest at the business organization level this year indicates that this collaborative big data approach may be getting ready for primetime. This summer, the US BCSD joined with companies from the Corporate Eco Forum in launching a new online Materials Marketplace aimed at scaling reuse across hundreds or potentially thousands of companies. In November, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development expressed its interest in the marketplace through its newly formed Safe and Sustainable Materials Cluster. The new software takes advantage of user-centric design and standardized and accessible data templates, to make it possible for companies to share information about the materials flowing through their operations in a confidential, safe environment. Having access to this kind of information has led to material reuse opportunities such as reusing fibrous wastes in ceiling tiles, waste heat from cement kilns drying brewery grain for bricking and shipping; and converting ephemeral packaging products into a range of cascading product forms as companies recognize there is value in what they used to think of as waste.

Recognizing and rewarding the climate benefits of material reuse is needed now to provide a positive path for decarbonized economic progress. Characterizing the values, both direct life cycle benefits and broader societal advancements, achievable through this frugal, inclusive approach will be necessary. But related systems exist and can be applied, tailored for materials management. Devising such a system is not a simple matter and would take a ramp up in our understanding of GHG accounting and the most recent climate models. This move would also require taking on the types of issues that have been difficult to resolve with, for example, the Clean Development Mechanism regarding additionality – so that waste managers would not be rewarded for “business as usual” but rather for innovative development. By adopting materials management as a core strategy of the climate agreement, governments will be empowering companies, communities and countries to move toward a more circular economy where wastes become resources that can be used over and over again as they are in the natural world. At the same time, adopting rewards for carbon reductions in materials management would bring a whole new community into the realm of climate solutions.

Andrew Mangan is Co-Founder and Executive Director of the United States Business Council for Sustainable Development and Marian Chertow is Associate Professor of Industrial Environmental Management at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.

Other news: COP20: Gobiernos de Suiza y Perú resaltan la importancia del uso eficiente de recursos para la creación de Eco-parques Industriales

We've been especially busy over the last few weeks with our project in Austin - the Austin Materials Marketplace. We're currently up to 27 participating businesses and organizations, ranging from large corporations like 3M and Spansion, down to local nonprofits like Any Baby Can. On 11/12, we hosted a live Google Hangout to look specifically at brewery by-products and waste, and talk about some good reuse solutions we're itching to help facilitate in Austin. Watch the recording below, and get in touch with us if it inspires any creative thinking.

And on 11/14 we hosted a medical devices-specific Google Hangout on how to transform medical device manufacturing waste into product. We discussed current industry best practices, some of our biggest waste challenges, and chatted about some interesting potential reuse opportunities. Watch below or click the Youtube link.

Houston / Geneva, October 10, 2014 – The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the United States Business Council for Sustainable Development (US BCSD) and partners in the WBCSD’s Energy Efficiency in Buildings market transformation initiative convened a deep-dive workshop exploring ambitious and actionable strategies for reducing energy consumption in buildings by 30% or more in the Houston market.

This workshop, known as an “EEB Laboratory”, was timely following the announcement by Houston’s Mayor Annise Parker, at the occasion of the UN Summit on Climate Change on September 23, that by 2050, Houston - America's energy capital - would cut CO2 emissions 80% from 2005 levels, the same as New York City's pledge.

A 30% energy saving in the commercial sector alone could translate into replacing 10 mid-size power plants and adding almost a billion dollars to the Houston economy.

During three days, a committee of experts made up of representatives from the WBCSD member companies and partners discussed with developers, investors, designers, engineers, facility operators and tenants how to define the business case for investments in energy efficiency of buildings for different stakeholder groups in the building value chain. Four topics were at the heart of the debate:

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Increasing value to stakeholders through energy efficiency

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Investing and Financing

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Verifying value and return on investments

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Appropriate policy and regulation

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The Laboratory identified ways to accelerate investments through awareness-raising, innovative financing approaches, improved operational performance to achieve energy savings, and the introduction of policies for increased market transparency.

The Laboratory also revealed there has been strong progress with the corporate sector driving demand for energy efficient Class A buildings. Meanwhile, the City of Houston is implementing energy efficiency programs for public buildings, developing progressive building energy codes and targeted incentive schemes are working well.

A detailed summary including a plan to foster the widespread uptake of energy efficiency in buildings in the Houston market will be published shortly.

“Houston has a tradition of private sector leadership – it is the ideal place to show that energy efficiency in buildings makes business sense”. - Andy Mangan, Executive Director, US BCSD

Roland Hunziker, Director Sustainable Buildings at the WBCSD, said: “The EEB Laboratory in Houston was the fourth such event led by the WBCSD after San Franciso, Shanghai and Warsaw. More Laboratories will be held in developed and emerging markets around the globe in order to surface good practice examples and foster learning between metropolitan and regional markets.”

With the Manifesto for Energy Efficiency in Buildings, the WBCSD provides the opportunity to any building owner, developer, investor or tenant to publicly state their commitment to enhance energy efficiency in their building stock, within a self-determined scope. An Energy Efficiency Toolkit is also freely available to help large owners, tenants and real estate management companies identify financially viable, yet ambitious, energy efficiency measures across a given building portfolio.

Other Press: Houston Chronicle - October 10, 2014 - Energy Efficiency 'Makes Business Sense' Houston Chronicle - October 7, 2014 - Classy old buildings strive for modern energy efficiencies

LANSING, Mich. – Pure Michigan Business Connect is partnering with General Motors, the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation, CXCatalysts, and the U.S. Business Council for Sustainable Development to launch the Reuse Opportunity Collaboratory (ROC) initiative on September 30 in Detroit. The event will bring together Michigan industries, institutions, small and medium sized businesses, and entrepreneurs to develop zero-waste partnerships in which one organization’s waste becomes another’s raw material.

“ROC Detroit is a groundbreaking effort to support sustainable manufacturing while growing Michigan’s economy and creating jobs,” said Michigan Economic Development Corporation President and CEO Michael A. Finney. “The ROC Detroit summit will help Michigan’s small and growing companies connect with General Motors and other partner companies’ waste management officials to find ways to reuse waste byproduct materials to their fullest potential.”

The ROC-Detroit launch matchmaking summit, taking place at the GM Renaissance Center, will give participating businesses the opportunity to be matched to ROC partner companies centered on procurement or partnership prospects for byproduct materials reuse. The partner companies include Aevitas Specialty Services Corporation, Alpha Resins, DOW Materials, General Motors, Marathon Petroleum, and Walker-Miller Energy. Participating suppliers may include any manufacturing-based company or waste management company interested in zero-waste production, including energy companies, manufacturers, and waste reduction and recycling businesses.

“General Motors is enthusiastic about this partnership because we believe that waste is simply a resource out of place,” said John Bradburn, GM global manager of waste reduction. “This event will create by-product synergies by repurposing one company’s trash into another’s primary resource.”

The by-product materials needs and application information can be viewed at http://www.puremichiganb2b.com/b2b-web/#roc.

Michigan companies interested in attending must complete the online application and identify their qualifications based on the needs listed. After each application is reviewed, invitations will be sent to companies whose intended purposes best match the available resources. Each invited company will have a private meeting to discuss potential opportunities with one of the procurement teams present at the summit.

The priority application deadline is Sept. 16, 2014. All applicants will be notified by Sept. 23 regarding participation eligibility. Applications received after the deadline will be considered if there are needs that have not been filled by the initial applicants.

Launched in 2011, Pure Michigan Business Connect is a public-private alliance of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, state agencies and major Michigan companies and organizations that connects in-state companies to business resources. Companies can find new ways to raise capital, get access to professional business services at little or no cost, connect with each other through a new business-to-business network, and identify potential supplier opportunities, while developing resources to improve their supply chains.

From left to right, PJ Simmons, President of the Corporate Eco Forum; Bill McDonough, Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Meta-Council on the Circular Economy; Andrew Morlet, CEO of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation; Tom Carpenter, Director, Sustainable Services, Waste Management; Andrew Mangan, Executive Director of the US BCSD; and Matt Rogers, Director, McKinsey & Co.

Businesses and entrepreneurs in Austin and Travis County now have a new resource to help find uses for unwanted materials. The US Business Council for Sustainable Development (US BCSD), Ecology Action of Texas, and Austin Resource Recovery today announced the launch of the Austin Materials Marketplace, an initiative in which one company’s waste becomes another company’s raw material. The new public-private partnership aims to reduce waste going to landfills by connecting businesses that generate unwanted materials with businesses that can use those materials.

“We are excited to introduce this resource to the Austin business community so that today’s waste products can become tomorrow’s new revenue source,” said Bob Gedert, director of Austin Resource Recovery. “The launch of the Austin Materials Marketplace is an important step toward achieving Austin’s Zero Waste goal.”

Since 1995, US BCSD has successfully implemented similar business-to-business material reuse projects in Houston, Chicago, Columbus, Seattle, Kansas City and Mobile, as well as the United Kingdom and China.

“Core to our approach is use of a regularly monitored online database and structured network meetings facilitated by technical experts that help companies understand each other’s material flows and identify materials matches,” said Andrew Mangan, executive director of the US BCSD. “This collaboration stimulates innovative and business-friendly solutions. As a 21-year member of the Austin business community, the US BCSD is excited to bring our work home to Austin,” he added.

The business council has teamed up with Austin-based Ecology Action of Texas on this project, a non-profit organization with significant experience in the Austin recycling community.

”Ecology Action is thrilled to be a part of bringing the practices and principles of landfill diversion that we have developed over the last 44 years into the mainstream of the Austin business community and business culture. This project is an incredibly significant milestone in our community’s path towards Zero Waste,” said Joaquin Mariel, executive director of Ecology Action.

Businesses and organizations interested in the program are encouraged to attend next week’s information session on the marketplace:

Austin Materials Marketplace Information Session Where: Big Medium, Canopy Gallery, 916 Springdale Rd, Austin, Texas 78702 When: August 19th, 5:30pm-8:30pm What: Introductory social event with a short presentation of the project, networking opportunities, and food and beverages.

For more information, visit http://austinmaterialsmarketplace.org.

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The US Business Council for Sustainable Development is a member-led nonprofit business association that harnesses the power of collaborative regional projects to develop, deploy, and scale sustainable solutions to materials, water, energy, and ecosystem challenges. It is based in Austin, Texas, and has projects located throughout the U.S.

Ecology Action of Texas is an Austin company with more than 40 years of experience in resource recovery operations, landfill diversion, advocacy, and zero waste education. EA has operated a recycling/hard-to-recycle/reuse drop-off center in partnership with the City of Austin for 15 years.

Austin Resource Recovery provides a wide range of services designed to transform waste into resources while keeping our community clean. Services include curbside collection of recycling, trash, yard trimmings and large brush and bulk items; street sweeping; dead animal collection; household hazardous waste disposal and recycling; and outreach and education. In December 2011, the Austin City Council approved the Austin Resource Recovery Master Plan, which is the City’s roadmap to Zero Waste. The City of Austin is committed to keeping at least 90 percent of discarded materials out of the landfill by 2040 or sooner.

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and the US BCSD are hosting a deep-dive workshop this October to support the development and implementation of ambitious, practical strategies for reducing building energy consumption by 30% or more in the Houston market.

This initiative is also joined by the City Energy Project, which is supporting the City of Houston, along with nine other cities, to help cut energy waste in large buildings, make them healthier environments and more profitable investments through energy efficiency.

To achieve that goal, various stakeholders in Houston’s commercial building sector will convene to diagnose and tackle key barriers to energy efficiency, recommend practical action plans for achieving market transformation to improve energy efficiency, and establish clearly defined stakeholder commitments.

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Source: Climate Change: Implications for Buildings, WBCSD

We're very much looking forward to welcoming you to Yale University next week, June 25-26, for our annual summer conference, organized in collaboration with the Yale Center for Business and the Environment. Below you'll find a few notes on logistics and other last minute considerations. And if you haven't registered yet, you can do so by clicking here now.

Dress code for the two-day event is business casual. Please note the slight chance of rain on Wednesday and plan accordingly. Our venue has a beautiful courtyard and a lot of great outside space for us to take advantage of, so hopefully that chance of rain stays low!

Public transportation is easily available if flying into La Guardia:

1) Get out of the terminal and walk to the bus stop (La Guardia transport information folks can point you in the right direction) 2) Get on the M60 bus (comes every 20 min, $2.50, need to prepay before you get on) 3) Take the bus to E 125 St/Lexington Av (about 30 minutes) 4) Walk to Harlem 125 St. (1 minute to the west) 4) Take a train to New Haven Union Station. ($16.50, ~2 hours)

New Haven train services run through Union Station:

Address: 50 Union Avenue, New Haven, CT 06519 Serviced by: Metro-North, with connecting service by Amtrak and CT Transit There are a number of transportation options to get you from Union Station to the Yale campus, including the Yale shuttle, and a number of taxi services.

New Haven has a number of taxi services should you need a ride:

City Wide Taxi/Yellow Taxi/New Haven-Milford Taxi: 203.777.0007 Heritage Taxi: 203.466.6666 Horizon Cab Company: 203.777.5555 Metro Taxi: 203.777.7777 Quick Taxi: 203.777.7778 Yellow Taxi: 203.777.7770

Venue: Yale School of Management Edward P. Evans Hall, Yale University 165 Whitney Avenue, New Haven, CT 06511

We'll be in Edward P. Evans Hall, the new home of the Yale School of Management, for the duration of our two-day agenda. Our registration table will be set up outside of Bewkes Classroom 2410. After entering through the main entrance of the building, head up the stairs to the second floor, and you should see us there.

Edward P. Evans Hall is within reasonable walking distance from most hotels in downtown New Haven. Click on the map for a more detailed look at walking directions.

[themify_button style="xlarge blue rounded" link="http://usbcsd.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Agenda-June-Conference-on-Scale-Up.pdf" ]Download the Agenda[/themify_button]

Light breakfast foods and coffee will be available outside of Bewkes Classroom 2410 starting at 8:00am on both the 25th and 26th, so please feel free to come early and mingle with your colleagues. The agenda kicks off at 9:00am on both days of the conference.

If you have any other questions, feel welcome to contact Daniel Kietzer at the US BCSD at 512.981.5417.

Andy Mangan, US BCSD Executive Director, is in Beijing this week reporting on outcomes from the Bohai By-Product Synergy Project. Special thanks to US BCSD members ConocoPhillips, Holcim, Alcoa, and GM; representatives from the US DOE, LBNL, Yale, NDRC, and MIIT; and our project partner the China Business Council for Sustainable Development.